Sept. 11

We went to an area called Weifang where we visited a kite shop and a wood block print shop. I took us about 3 hours to reach our first destination which was the kite shop. This was all well and good but I wasn't feeling good (8 days of breakfast/lunch/dinner being chinese food) so the bus ride didn't add anything to the experience.
Finally arriving at this China renowned kite shop we had to quickly play a game of frogger to reach the establishment that was across the street. Upon entering we were quickly herded into the back so we could see where they made the kites.
We found that many of the colorful patterns on the kites were actually screen printed instead of painted. Though some of the smaller detailed stuff was done by hand and we saw a girl putting some dots on what appeared to be some kind of bug kite. We moved further back and saw where they did some of the larger screen prints for the really big kites. There was other doors and we looked in one that was pretty far back. It was filled with sewing machines and there were boxes filled with completed rain jackets and material to make the jackets (aka sweatshop). Besides the potential sweatshop in the back the kite shop was kind of cool. We learned that in Weifang kite flying is actually a competitive sport. I bought a crazy looking stuffed cat for lauren I should post a picture of it.
We quickly loaded the bus and drove 2 blocks to the print shop we had planned on visiting, but turns out the printer wasn't home at the time and was actually at a wedding. So Ying quickly made a call and found a print shop that was just a little ways down the street.
We hurried to the knew print shop where we got to watch him pull some proofs and then actually got to pull a print of our own. After I pulled my proof the printer said it was the best of all the prints made (gloat gloat). There were 2 tiny dogs that were just running around under our feet just being horribly cute. The day was pretty great, but I was happy to sleep tonight.